Before him perpetually were two figures of a most human and practical reality.

He saw a great actress, absorbed in the excitement of the most stimulating of lives, her power ripening from year to year, her fame growing and widening with time; and beside this brilliant vision he saw himself, the quiet man of letters, with the enthusiasms of youth behind him, the calm of middle-age before him.

What possible link could there be between them?
At last Wallace's letter cleared still further the issues of the conflict; or rather, it led to Kendal's making a fatalist compact with himself.

He was weary of the struggle, and it seemed to him that he must somehow or other escape from the grip in which his life was held.

He must somehow deaden this sense, this bitter sense of loss, if it were only by postponing the last renunciation.